The Watcher (2 page)

Icy flurries stirred around him. By the time anyone looked in this area, his tracks would be hidden beneath a fresh snowfall. The boy-man breathed easier now and continued his march to the snowmobile while exciting pictures raced through his mind. Removing the thick glove on his left hand, he fingered the trim at the edge of the cotton panties.

Placer Hills, California, October, Present Day

Chapter One

Detective Benjamin Slater pushed back from his desk in the Investigations Division and snagged his badge and gun from the center drawer.

“Let’s roll, Bauer,” he directed his partner, who sat opposite him, feet propped on the desk as he struggled through the convoluted language of a forensic report.

“What’s up?”

“The girl whose mother reported her missing last week?”

“The Johnston girl.”

“She turned up.”

“Man, I hate when that happens.” Turning up meant
dead
in police parlance.

“Yeah, well, we’re lucky to have discovered a body at all. Usually teenagers that age are runaways and never get found. Even if they do come from upper-class families like the Johnstons.”

Bauer was already pushing his long arms into a plaid jacket and scurrying after Slater in the dingy corridor. “What do we know so far?”

“Some kids fooling around at the lake stumbled on a body in the rock shallows. Probably a recent dump.”

“This is the part I
really
hate.”

“You shouldn’t be in homicide if you hate finding bodies, Bauer. It’s part of the job.” Slater shot him a contained smile that didn’t quite reach his serious gray eyes.

“Are we sure it’s her?”

“The responding officer says he memorized her picture, has a daughter same age.”

“Oh, man,” Bauer repeated, double-stepping to keep up with Slater’s long strides.

The ride to Beale’s Lake took less than fifteen minutes. The partners drove in silence, Bauer riding shotgun, folding his lanky form into Slater’s old Chevy. Slater’s sunglasses hid his eyes and his fingers drummed restlessly on the steering wheel. In the nine months Bauer had been Slater’s partner, he learned the man didn’t take kindly to unnecessary chatter.

Teenager Jennifer Johnston had been reported missing by her parents the previous Wednesday afternoon. Now it looked like the case was officially a homicide.

By the time Slater and Bauer arrived, Deputy Jason Durand, the first responder at the scene, had secured the perimeter with bright yellow crime scene tape. Fortunately, there were no people at the lake on this cold fall day except for the teenagers who’d stumbled upon the body at approximately 4:30 this morning.

After getting the names, addresses, and brief statements from the three boys and four girls, Durand had advised them to return to their homes. He cautioned them not to talk to each other or anyone else about their discovery until they’d been contacted again by a member of the sheriff’s department.

An experienced deputy, Durand had done a good job of keeping the teenagers from tramping on any possible evidence at the scene. “They totally freaked at the sight,” the baby-faced deputy explained, pointing to the spot where the body lay. “Came just close enough to realize she was dead. One of the boys used his cell phone to call 911. Claim they didn’t see or hear anything unusual.”

Each of the teens would have to be re-interviewed, but according to the officer, they’d been at the lake since 10:30 the previous night, a Sunday. Why the hell, Slater wondered, were kids out all night on a school night? Didn’t they have parents?

They’d built an unauthorized fire on the beach, discovered the body when they’d wandered to another spot in the early hours of the morning. The kids were scared to death, and as afraid of getting caught for violating park rules and curfew as they were of finding a dead body.

Even from his position on the slight embankment overlooking the shore, Slater knew if the teenagers had gotten closer to the naked body, they would’ve run like hell. The fine sand at the water’s edge hugged the corpse, and the icy water turned it a deathly color more startling than the brick-colored blood.

Slater looked over to where the medical examiner, a slim, pale-faced man of sixty with a shock of white hair, had finished his preliminary examination and was jotting down notes. The crime scene photographer hovered nearby.

The medical examiner or the crime scene techs rarely arrived at the scene before the detectives did, but the dispatcher had tried Slater at home first, and when she couldn’t reach him, she’d contacted the M.E.

Slater felt a grumble rise in his throat. He was persnickety about his crime scenes. Evidence brought
to
a crime scene was as important as what’d been left, and he didn’t need more trace evidence to sift through. But it looked like Durand had been thorough in protecting the crime scene for only the meticulous M.E. and the technicians had penetrated the inner perimeter.

Dr. Wilson caught Slater’s eye and evidently anticipated his question because he called out from where he stood beside the morgue wagon. “Before you ask, Detective, the answer is
perhaps
by late tomorrow.”

Slater nodded and made his way toward the shore, turning his attention to the girl’s body. He glanced side-ways at his partner, who’d turned a sickly shade of gray. The next moment Bauer dashed to the rocks at the lake’s edge and threw up his breakfast.

Slater was sure the body belonged to Jennifer Johnston because he’d studied her high school graduation picture often enough, and the blond hair was unmistakable. Nevertheless, her parents would make the ID official. Slater was very much interested in seeing their reaction first-hand.

While Bauer hovered over the rocks, clutching his stomach, Slater knelt to study the body. Although he showed only detachment, inside he felt a whirlwind of disgust, anger, and grief at what’d been done to the girl. But he’d learned the hard way not to give in to emotion.

The partially clothed body looked as if it’d been flung carelessly beside the water like a malicious child would toss a broken doll away. The girl lay half in, half out of the shallow water, her torso facing away from the shore. Her left leg bent oddly, clearly broken, and her right arm flung outward toward a rock cropping. Her hand rested palm upward, fingers splayed in mock supplication. Her face turned downward into the crook of her left shoulder, and her pale blond hair, sodden and twined with weeds, covered her face.

Slater glanced at Matt’s sallow face. “You okay?”

“Yeah, it’s just – ” Bauer wiped at his mouth with a white handkerchief.

“Forget it. Happens to everybody at least once.” Slater resumed his inspection.

Durand had photographed the scene and sketched the grid, the crime scene technicians had already processed the area and gathered evidence, and Dr. Wilson had made a preliminary exam. Slater wouldn’t disturb any trace evidence now. He reached to grasp the girl by the shoulders and forced himself not to think of her as human.

The body, whitish-gray as a fish’s underbelly, had moved through rigor mortis to flaccidity, no putrefaction yet, but Slater knew the rigid cold of the water could’ve slowed down the process. A safe estimate was she’d been dead between twenty-four and thirty-six hours.

“Let’s turn her over,” he instructed.

Bauer helped him lift the lower extremities from the shallow water. The head fell back, exposing a nasty gash across the girl’s throat. “Oh, shit.” Bauer’ voice was high and thready.

Slater hoped his partner wouldn’t vomit again. “Steady, man. Just hold the head up. I want to see if there’s anything beneath the body.”

The slit throat hadn’t caused the girl’s death, even though the wound itself was grisly and the skin gaped to show the tendons and muscles of the neck. Severing the carotid artery would produce massive amounts of blood. He carefully probed the back of the girl’s head. No blunt force trauma.

Bauer sucked shallow breaths through his lips, and edged sideways, almost dropping the girl.

“Damn it, hold still,” Slater snapped. At the look on Bauer’s face, he silently berated himself. Always decently kind to everyone, his partner didn’t deserve the impatient tone.

This last month Slater had snarled at every member of his team like a bear coming too soon out of hibernation. Even Sheriff Marconi had commented on his short fuse, claiming it wasn’t anything a good lay couldn’t cure. Must be some kind of mid-life crisis, Slater thought, though he was shy of forty by several years.

He continued to examine the girl’s lifeless body, her slim shoulders and firmly muscled leg. He didn’t know what he was looking for, but there was always something, some careless clue left by a hurried killer.

He lifted the girl’s bent leg and raised her hip, noticed the lack of postmortem lividity on the side where she rested. Trace amounts of blood stained the ground between her legs and under her hips where the water hadn’t reached.

There should be more blood.
Slater was certain Wilson’s autopsy report would show the girl had been killed elsewhere, bled out, and moved.

Damn.
This wasn’t the primary crime scene and their job just got a whole lot harder.

As Slater straightened the leg, something caught his attention. “Take a look, Bauer.”

Carved into the crease, high on the inside of her right thigh was a sign that looked like a tiny loop crusted with body fluids. Slater motioned the crime scene photographer forward and hoped the techs had gotten trace from the mark.

“It’s like a figure eight on its side,” Bauer offered.

Slater grunted, wondering if the mark meant anything. He explored the body, noting the wounds in the belly and chest, deep, ragged holes as if her attacker had stabbed her, and for good measure worked his weapon back and forth.

What kind of monster did this to another human being?

The instrument used looked to be a long-bladed knife. The violence of the attack suggested the perpetrator was a man, but it didn’t take much pressure to inflict a stab wound. Once the skin was penetrated by the blade tip, the amount of force necessary to penetrate major organs was very little.

He noted many shallow cuts and counted at least twenty stab wounds, some of which were so deep he wondered how the killer had removed the weapon afterward. But he didn’t think the carefully-placed stabs were meant to be killing blows.
Had the killer intended to punish his victim and lost control?

Slater pushed the tangle of wet hair from the girl’s face. For all the damage done to the body, the face, as clear and smooth as a baby’s, was unmarked. In death the girl looked like a Greek statue, cold and hard as stone. Lying on her back with her eyes closed, she seemed younger than she was, and very vulnerable.

Slater hoped to God Jennifer Johnston was dead before these blows were inflicted.

What kind of maniac were they dealing with?

Chapter Two

Kate Myers drove fast.

She thrived on speed and recklessness and made no excuses for it. Even though the loose ends of her ponytail slashed across her eyes, she liked the sensation of the wind blowing in her hair and whipping at her face.

Once she’d put Los Angeles County, with its ten million people in their millions of smog-producing vehicles, behind her, she reveled in the fresh air. She glanced at the map weighted down on the passenger side of her Volkswagen convertible. She’d been on I-5 since early morning, and in spite of six hours of driving, she was pumped up with excitement over the latest hit she’d gotten on her home computer this morning.

It was a sad truism that if she had a boyfriend, she wouldn’t have been searching the private database with the software she’d created some years ago. And she wouldn’t have found the hit so soon. As soon as the new case rolled across her monitor, she’d known it was the one she’d been waiting for.

She’d had to convince Captain Howes to get her temporarily reassigned to the Bigler County Sheriff’s Office and effect her leave immediately, but she’d finally persuaded him to call in a favor with law enforcement up north. He’d complained, but when he called her Missy, Kate knew he, too, was intrigued about the discovery.

Howes was the only person she’d shared her obsession with. Well, that’s what
he
called it. An obsession born of trauma and reared in aggression. Maybe he was right.

Normal girl like her, he claimed, so pretty and all, should go home at night to a husband and a bunch of kids to keep her busy. Wasn’t going to happen, Kate knew, because more than obsession drove her. It was a strong sense of justice. Of righting old wrongs and preventing new ones.

Because she was a damn good worker and a critical part of the Captain’s department, he put up with her frequent wild goose chases around the country. However, whatever drove her – tenacity, revenge, or justice – Howes constantly warned her of the cost she might pay down the road.

Kate didn’t care. She’d never give up the search. She felt like she’d been waiting for the right piece of the puzzle most of her life, and she’d go to the ends of the earth to track it down. Luckily, she only had to make a four-hundred-mile drive.